Sahib (17 page)

When Lieutenant Walter Campbell reached Madras with his regiment in 1830, he described how he was immediately

beset by hawkers, jugglers, snake-charmers, ‘coolies’ and mendicants begging for coppers … After standing on the beach for upwards of an hour, braving the fury of a tropical sun and keeping our assailants at bay as well we could, the debarkation of the troops was completed and we were marched up to Bridge seven miles from Madras where we found tents pitched for our reception, and where we are to remain ten days or a fortnight to make the necessary preparations for marching up country to Bangalore.
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Lieutenant Innes Munro of HM’s 73rd Highlanders, arriving at Madras in March 1780, recalled his comrades’ confusion on seeing Indian men:

All those natives have such a genteel and delicate mien that, together with their dress, a stranger is apt to take them for women; and it is truly laughable to hear the Highlanders, under that idea, pass their remarks upon them in the Gaelic language. ‘Only smoke the whiskers on that hussy,’ says one. ‘Well, I never supposed till now,’ observed another, ‘that there was any place in the world where the women wore beards.’ And, seeing one of them who was very corpulent stalk about the deck in an unwieldy manner, a third wondered ‘how she could have ventured on board so far gone in her pregnancy’. All of them were taken for ladies of easy virtue; and it was only in attempting to use a few familiarities with them as such that the Highlanders realised their mistake.
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John Corneille landed at Cuddalore in September 1754 and marched to Madras with HM’s 39th Foot; on arrival the colonel was ‘saluted at entrance with thirteen guns’. He found that Madras had:

no security for ships and a roadstead wild and open, besides a most dangerous surf which makes the landing difficult and dangerous. There are two towns, the European and the Black towns. The former is well built, with lofty houses and flat roofs, but the streets are very narrow except for those immediately about the governor’s which is in the middle and was the first building the English made after they landed. It consists of a tolerably good house surrounded with offices and a slight wall, and is properly called Fort St George.

The fort was speedily rebuilt in the best modern manner to become:

one of the strongest places in India. There are several excellent good bastions, and a broad, deep, wet ditch. All the adjacent country is commanded from the bastions except a small hill at the north-west end which, if they continue as they have begun, will soon be carried away to make the glacis.
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Albert Hervey was escorted to the fort on his arrival in Madras, entered via its north gate, and ‘the sergeant took me directly to the adjutant general’s and the town-major’s offices, where I reported myself in due form. I was then conducted to the cadet’s quarters, where I was told I should have to reside until further orders.’

He was speedily posted to a regiment inland, which saved him expense and temptation:

I write strongly against young officers being kept at Madras; because I have myself experienced the dangers and disadvantages of the station. It is ruination to a lad’s pockets, ruination to his principles, and ruination to his health; and I can only conclude the subject by saying that I think their being allowed to remain at the Presidency longer than is absolutely necessary, is a gross injustice to them. There is nothing like up-country and strict drill discipline, in my opinion.
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Bombay was the oldest of the presidencies, for it had become British as part of the dowry of Charles II’s Queen, Catherine of Braganza; its name (now officially replaced by Mumbai) stems from the Portuguese
Bom Baia,
meaning good bay. Although it had an excellent natural harbour it was not well placed for the China trade, and its hinterland was dominated by the fierce Marathas and scorched by repeated war. The Hindu inhabitants were warlike: some Maratha women still wear their saris caught up between their legs to reflect the days when they might fight alongside their menfolk. John Shipp fought the Marathas, and wrote that: ‘Their wives are excellent horse-women, many of them good with sword and matchlock. They are mounted on the best horses, and it is not unusual for them to carry one child in front and one behind while riding at full speed.’
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In 1825 Bombay was dismissed as ‘of little importance to the [East India] Company’: trade with the hinterland had only begun to
be feasible with the end of the Second Maratha War in 1805 and the city lacked a natural corridor in the way that Calcutta was served by the Ganges valley. But by the 1840s the picture had begun to change. The gradual replacement of the Cape route by steam travel from Suez made Bombay the preferred port of entry, and with the development of railways internal travel was made quicker and more reliable. James Williams landed there in late 1859, and told his cousin that it was ‘the most awful place imaginable’, complaining:

We are likely to be in Bombay for some time – it is the worst station in India – nothing on earth to do save die – the voyage here was very long 129 days. There was a good deal of quarrelling that helped pass the time.

He was soon posted to a cantonment on the outskirts of Calcutta, which was altogether better he felt: ‘Calcutta is a charming place compared with Bombay. The houses are large, two-storied and comfortable. The only bother is the distance and the road we have to go over before reaching town.’
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Bombay was the starting point for operations into Sind, and so became increasingly important in military as well as commercial terms. In 1839 a flotilla from Bombay, with HMS
Wellesley,
HMS
Algerine,
the Honourable Company’s Ship
Constance
and the transport
Hannah,
conveyed a small force including HM’s 40th Foot. The garrison of Karachi quickly fled after
Wellesley
‘opened her broadside on the fort with admirable precision’ and then, as Lieutenant Martin Neill of the 40th recalled:

The Admiral and Brigadier landed in the evening to inspect
the scene of their triumph
after which they returned, accompanied by [Lieutenant] Colonel Powell [commanding officer of the 40th] to enjoy a comfortable dinner, while we small fry amused ourselves planting
picquets.
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Soldiers bound for the garrison at Karachi faced a protracted journey. Steamers from Bombay anchored a mile offshore and passengers had to land from shallow-draught boats: it was another mile by carriage to Karachi itself. There was not much to Karachi even when you arrived, and a generous assessment of the Sind Club in 1890 suggested that although its denizens ‘“swear” by their whisky
 … by constantly using the same spirit without any change, the palate loses to a great extent its power of appreciation’. It would not be until the First World War, when the Mesopotamia campaign greatly increased the traffic through the port, that Karachi would really come of age.

By the 1880s Bombay was the base for one of the two lines of communication running up to the North-West Frontier. One followed the line of the Grand Trunk Road from Calcutta to Lucknow and Peshawar, and the other ran from Bombay to Mhow and Quetta. Many battle-wounded soldiers bound for Britain came through Bombay, and on the railway north-east of the city were the barracks and military hospital at Deolali. The latter was the last leg in the evacuation of men whose nerves had given way under the influence of drink, climate and danger, and the nervous tics of its patients gave rise to the expression ‘doolally tap’. Private Frank Richards observed that Deolali was the depot where British soldiers whose enlistment terms had expired awaited a troopship home (the ‘trooping season’ then ran from October to March):

The time-expired men at Deolalie had no arms or equipment; they showed kit now and again and occasionally went on a route-march, but time hung heavily on their hands and in some cases men who had been exemplary soldiers got into serious trouble and were awarded terms of imprisonment before they were sent home.

The practice of holding men at Deolali was abolished while Richards was in India, and thereafter they went straight to ports of embarkation.
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It was Bombay’s importance as India’s chief military port that led to construction of the symbolic Gateway to India that looks eastwards across the harbour. Planned to celebrate the accession of George V as King Emperor, it was designed, in Anglo-Saracenic style, by George Wittet: its final plans were accepted in that momentous month, August 1914. Its symbolism would continue until the very end of the Raj with the last British unit to leave India, 1st Battalion the Somerset Light Infantry (the old HM’s 13th Light Infantry of Jelalabad fame), departing from the gateway on 28 February 1948.

B
EHIND THE MAJOR PORTS
lay the expanse of India, the
mofussil,
the vast and varied world of districts, country stations and cantonments. To a citizen of Calcutta the
mofussil
was anywhere in Bengal apart from his own city. But to an inhabitant of a
sudder
or chief station, the
mofussil
was the rural localities of his own area. Thus to an inhabitant of Benares, the
mofussil
was anywhere out of the city and station of Benares.
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In most colonial slang there was a term that meant the same: the
bled
in French North Africa or the
ulu
in Malaya: the great unseen hinterland, shimmering or steaming behind the coast. The soldiers who arrived at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay set off into this by river boat, rail or, for the first century of British rule, simply on their feet. Regiments, British and Indian, crawled across the
mofussil
in marching columns like a great torrent of soldier ants. There was no clear break between the great martial caravanserais of old princely India and the armies of the Raj. Assistant Surgeon John Dunlop watched a British army on the move in 1848, but we might almost subtract a century or two.

The usual calculation is that for every fighting man in the high-caste Bengal army there are five servants or noncombatants: and in a Bombay force, where the caste is generally lower, there are about three camp followers to every fighting man. Consequently, at the lowest calculation, the two divisions moving towards Mooltan, numbered in all nearly 20,000 human beings; with from twelve to fifteen thousand
camels, besides elephants, horses, mules and bullocks. The procession usually formed by this enormous cortege, is thus described by Lieutenant Colonel Burlton … :

First comes a bevy of elephants, noble-looking animals, laden with the tents of the European soldiers; then follow long strings of government camels, carrying the spare ammunition and the tents of the native troops. Then again, we have more government camels carrying hospital stores, wines, medicines, quilts, beds, pots and pans of all sorts and sizes. Imagine, for a moment, a county infirmary, or rather its contents live and dead, stock, furniture and stores, to be removed daily, some ten, twelve or fifteen miles on the backs of camels, and you will have some faint idea of this very small portion of our baggage … 

Another long string of Government camels, carrying the day’s supply of grain for the cavalry and artillery horses comes next, as well as what are called troop stores, viz horse-clothing, head and heel ropes, pickets, nose bags, spare shoes etc. The supply of grain for one day, for 8,000 horses, would require 200 camels for its conveyance. And now comes the private baggage; the tents of the ‘sybarite’ officers; the spare clothing, blankets, pots and pans of the soldiers, European and Native.
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Unless there was a vital operational necessity, it was important not to march during the heat of the day, and armies often broke camp while it was still dark. But whatever the hour, the procedure was the same. Captain Innes Munro was in Eyre Coote’s army in 1780:

The first [drum-] ruffle is no sooner made by the senior corps in camp than there is a general stir throughout the whole army. The lascars knock down the tent pins; the
dubash
prepares breakfast for his master; the cook boils water for tea; the coolies pick up their loads; the soldiers are warming up some curry and rice and receiving their morning drams; the carriage bullocks are brought up from the rear; down fall the tents like trees in a forest yielding to the stroke of the woodcutter. While the officers finish their breakfast some cold meat is packed up for the march. By this time also swarms of the black race have kindled blazing fires in every corner of the camp, and such of
those connexions as had agreed the night before to keep company on the line of march are now heard, man, woman and child, bellowing aloud each other’s names in the most discordant sound.

The assembly now beats off, and, breakfast over, the tents are packed upon the bullocks’ backs, as are the rice and other public stores; the baggage is mounted upon the coolies’ heads, the officers’ foot boys sling their brandy bottle, a tumbler, and an earthen pot of cool water, carrying also a chair or camp stool upon each of their heads. The soldiers are by this time fallen into their ranks, and all the officers attend, when the horse-keepers are ordered to bring up the horses to the rear of the regiment. The pickets having joined, all the drums of the army strike up the march, and the whole line steps off, the followers with the baggage being commanded to keep upon the most convenient flank of the army; but this last order is very rarely obeyed, for the baggage and multitude extend to such a length and depth that the whole line, which generally marches by files, becomes a perfect convoy.
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In the hot-weather season the march started very early indeed. On the advance to Multan, John Clark Kennedy reported that:

The weather is intensely hot, and we are like the birds that fly by night. Reveille sounds at midnight. Everyone rubs his eyes and calls for his bearer. A hurried word, a biscuit and something to drink. We assemble as best we can in the dark. The generals take their places and then, after an hour of seeming confusion, tents being struck, camp followers making an awful noise, camels doing ditto, we are on the march … 

Our route has been marked out by heaps of earth by the sappers who have gone on ahead the day before with the Q[uarter] M[aster] G[eneral]. When the bugle sounds every man is down on the ground and nine out of ten asleep in a moment. The halt over, we push on again and shortly after daybreak reach our camping site. As some of our tents have been struck the day before and sent in advance we find them pitched. All hands now turn in for a sleep. Breakfast at eight, after which most sleep again but I always make a point of reading and writing.
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Assistant Surgeon Dunlop described the same scene:

Then comes an extraordinary assemblage of men, women and children, ponies, mules, asses and bullocks and carts laden with all sorts of conceivable and inconceivable things: grain, salt, cloths, sweetmeats and tobacco, silks, garlic, shawls, potatoes, stockings and slippers, turners’, carpenters’ and blacksmiths’ shops and forges, tailors and cobblers, saddlers and perfumers, fiddlers,
nautch
-girls and jugglers which help to make up an Indian bazaar … What a sea of camels! What a forest of camels’ heads and humps, and grain bags! What plaintive moanings of anxious mothers, and lost, bewildered cubs! What gutteral, gurgling groanings in the long throats of salacious and pugnacious males! What shouts of men! What resounding of sticks! as the vast mass is driven slowly along, browsing as they go, and leaving not one green leaf behind them.

Dunlop added Charles Napier’s wonderful summation: ‘Such is the picture of the baggage of an Indian army: Smithfield market alone can rival it.’
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Although men often grew attached to their horses and elephants, the baggage camels were rarely companionable creatures. In 1880 Brigadier General H. F. Brooke and a companion received six camels and one driver long before dawn on a chilly Afghan morning. The driver not only ‘seemed perfectly ignorant of everything connected with camels’, but was ‘a wild villager from the neighbouring hills’ who spoke (and, it seemed, only understood) an unintelligible tongue. When, after much time and endless difficulties, just two of the camels were ready:

a demon entered the two loaded camels (camels sit down to be loaded) and kicked the whole of their loads off. In the first instance this was rather ludicrous, and we laughed at it, and began again; but when 4 o’clock came, and daylight (which means intense heat) began to appear, and yet not one camel could be induced to let the load remain on their backs, things looked serious, and we despaired of getting off at all.

They had not gone a mile before the loads were on the ground once more, and they had to be repacked again and again.
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The 3rd Light Dragoons went off to the First Afghan War in January 1842 with 576 fighting men in its ranks, but with ‘upwards of a thousand camels laden with treasure, arms, ammunition, clothing and stores of every description’. On 7 March Captain Walter Unett told how:

We crossed the Sutlej on the 22nd ultimo, by a bridge of boats, and were obliged to pass over in single file, which took two whole days … We were detained seven days crossing the Ravi … This is a great misfortune, as we were ordered to do the 31 marches to Peshawar in 21 days. You can have no idea of crossing a river in boats. We have camels with us and many have actually to be lifted into the boats. They are the most obstinate devils alive … 
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Private Tubb Goodward of HM’s 16th Lancers did not even have the luxury of boats in December 1843:

Commenced to move long before daylight to get the tents and baggage packed in good time for fording the river, thinking from the immense quantity of baggage that had to pass over, there would be great confusion … The Infantry who passed over first was at the ford by 6 o’clock where they had to ford, to do which they had to pull off their trousers, the water in parts being full four feet deep, which was anything but pleasant this cold morning. However, they reached the opposite shore in safety. Following close to them was the Artillery … The Cavalry … passed over without any casualties but a few wet legs particularly those who had low horses … On reaching the opposite bank had to wait a full hour for the Artillery, who previous to fording had to take all the ammunition boxes off the wagons to keep them dry and send them over in a boat and reload them, which being done again resumed our march, the road running for about three miles in a deep ravine.
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John Pearman of the 3rd Light Dragons forded the Sutlej in early 1849:

We received the order to undress, take off our boots, draws and trowsers, tie them round our necks and then mount our horses to take the ford, which we did by file or in twos, a row of camels above stream and a row below us. So into the water
we went, and cold it was, most of it snow water from the Kashmir mountains.
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These marches were being conducted in wartime, but even a routine change of garrisons in peacetime looked very similar. Albert Hervey warned his readers that:

To a thousand fighting men there are about four to five thousand camp followers, and upwards, the families of officers and men, the servants of the former with their respective families, the bullock-drivers and
bandy
-men, the coolies,
palankeen
-bearers and others.
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At the appointed time the General Call to Arms was beaten, tents were struck and breakfasts eaten. About half an hour later the drums beat the Assembly:

and the troops fall in; the column is formed right or left in front; the advance and rear-guards are thrown out, and all move off on the sound of the ‘quick march’ from the orderly bugler; upon which the men generally give a shout and a huzzah, and away they go, leaving their old encampment, and looking forward with anxious expectations to reaching their next stage, and meeting with their families whom they have sent on in advance.

After clearing the old ground, the taps sound ‘unfix bayonets – and – march at ease’, when officers sheath their swords and mount, while the men march as they like, the pivots of sections, however, preserving their distances, and the whole push along as fast as they like, conversing with each other, the Joe Miller of each company telling his yarns, or cracking his jokes, some of the fellows singing, and others laughing. It very often happens that the officers are made subjects of mirth, or of panegyric by the latter, as they are liked or disliked by the men.
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For most of the period soldiers and the armies of which they formed part needed access to hard cash, and travelling military treasuries were a feature of marching armies. Lieutenant Reginald Wilberforce of HM’s 52nd Light Infantry marched on Delhi from Sialkot in May 1857.

The most irksome duty we had was treasure guard; the troops before Delhi had no money, and so we brought them down a considerable amount. This treasure, all in rupees, was carried on camels, and a guard of 100 men with a captain and a subaltern had to march with the camels. Now, a camel is a useful beast of burden, but … his pace is two miles an hour, the most wearisome pace in the world … The treasure guard always started first and got into camp last. Then, all day long, sentries had to be visited, guards inspected, until the happy time came when the relief came and the boxes of rupees were handed over to some one else’s custody.
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Captain Crawford McFall of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry found himself acting as field treasury officer with the Zhob Valley Field Force in 1890, responsible for half a
lakh
of rupees, carried in fourteen boxes. Nine boxes contained whole rupees, 5,000 in each box in five bags of 1,000 each. There was one box of small silver totalling 4,500 rupees; two boxes of single pice to the value of 150 rupees each, and two boxes of double pice at 100 rupees each. The money boxes were loaded into oak chests, two to a camel. They had their own escort on the march and were secured by the column’s quarter-guard at night. McFall was glad to be rid of the responsibility when the proper field treasury officer arrived.
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Private Henry Metcalfe of HM’s 32nd Foot spent half his first two years in India on the move. He left Chinsurah for the 500-mile march to Allahabad on 14 January 1850, and

remained in the fortress for the hot season, which I thought very hot indeed. Marched from there on the following October to a station in the Punjab called Jullundur, and arrived there on the 14th March 1851. That march was about 700 miles.

Remained in Jullundur until the following November, and marched to the North-West Frontier (where I saw the first shot fired in anger). Arrived at Peshawur on the 8th January 1852.
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